Three, Eir-Meteor and Vodafone respond to performance report

Yesterday (12 July), a new report into the performance of Irish mobile operators found Eir-Meteor and Vodafone to be performing better than Three. However, future investment could change that.

The report into mobile performance in Limerick, Cork and Dublin by RootMetrics produced interesting findings, with Vodafone topping the charts in the capital, while Eir-Meteor ranked highest in the other two counties.

There were nuances to the findings, with Three – ranking second in Limerick and third elsewhere – performing well in terms of reliability, which the company has since said it is happy about.

Restructuring, upgrading

The happiness is tempered by its general ranking, perhaps. However, Three has pointed out its current restructuring, involving the merging of two networks and a widespread upgrade.

“Maintaining network reliability is a key focus for Three as we go through our upgrade programme,” a Three spokesperson told Siliconrepublic.com. Three also claimed that the better performance in Limerick was down to “some upgrade work” having already been carried out there.

Dublin and Cork will be upgraded next, with Three hoping to be the best performer in the market next year.

Given that this report looked at three of the major metropolitan areas in Ireland, Three noted its Ennis works, where 4G sites have multiplied, as an example of its work.

Happy and skeptical

Eir-Meteor, performing the best of the operators in general, was happy.

“Notwithstanding the strong results, we are committed to further investment in our network to benefit Eir and Meteor customers,” said Fergal McCann, director of mobile networks at Eir.

He said his organisation will extend its 4G service to 90pc of the population by end of the year, upping that to 95pc “by early next year”.

Vodafone, though, is sceptical of the report as a whole and, despite the findings that it performed best in Dublin – where it achieved the highest overall single county rank of any operator – it feels the report doesn’t tally with its own findings.

Noting its recent assessment as best-in-class by P3, findings that “were supported by Comreg”, Vodafone said it could not confirm the accuracy of RootMetrics’ findings as it hadn’t seen the full data used to compile the scores.

“Vodafone Group conducts monthly drive tests and the findings in the RootMetrics report are not consistent with what the Comreg drive tests, the P3 tests and our own testing tell us,” it said in a statement.

Communications Minister Denis Naughten has said a taskforce, featuring Minister for Rural Affairs Heather Humphreys, will look at the performance of mobile phone networks around the country.